After the catastrophic and sudden attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt appointed Admiral Chester Nimitz as the commander of the Pacific Fleet. The admiral hastily flew to Hawaii to assume command and witnessed such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeatism that it occurred to him that many might think the Japanese had already won the war.
On Christmas Day 1941, Admiral Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere he looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked: “Well, Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?”
Admiral Nimitz’s reply shocked everyone within hearing range: “God bless America,” he said. “He mercifully was taking care of us in our greatest hour of peril. The Japanese made three of the biggest blunders that an attack force could possibly make.
Mistake Number One: They attacked on Sunday morning when nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were on leave. If the same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk, we would have lost 30,800 instead of 3,800 crewmen.
Mistake Number Two: When the Japanese saw all of those battleships lined up in a row, they got so carried away by their vaulting ambition in sinking those battleships that they forgot to bomb our dry docks. Had they destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow each and every one of those ships to the American mainland to be repaired. As it is, one tugboat can pull them over to the dry docks and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them back to the mainland. Already, I have crews ashore, right here, anxious to man those ships.
Mistake Number Three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific Theatre of War is stored on top of the ground in storage tanks five miles over that hill. One attack plane could have destroyed our whole fuel supply. God only knows how we could have recovered after a tragedy of that magnitude.
That’s why I say that God was providentially taking care of us by allowing the Japanese to commit three of the biggest mistakes that an enemy attack force could possibly make.”
Note: There is a good reason why our national motto is IN GOD WE TRUST. Hope is something no one can live without. Admiral Nimitz was a man of hope who could see a silver lining in a situation or circumstances where most everyone else only saw despair and defeatism. This ability to replace despair with hope, enabled the Admiral to serve his country and his countrymen well by overcoming tremendous odds. The full story of Admiral Nimitz and Pearl Harbor is contained in a small book entitled: Reflections on Pearl Harbor by Admiral Chester Nimitz. Another sign of God’s providence that day which the Admiral did not mention, was that the American Aircraft carriers, which were much more effective than the battle ships in winning the war in the Pacific, were away at sea, safe from the Japanese strike force that day.
— Fr. Hugh Duffy
2 Comments
Patricia Huhn
Powerful information. And, as comments go, it definitely could have been worse.
Claire Emilie Schonaerts
Although many beautiful souls found their way to heaven, many heroes were born that fateful day. Each one living out the promise that we are never alone. God is always with us.